Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme the First Celebrity Chef. Ian Kelly. Walker. New York 2003.

I was reading a review of Ian Kelly’s latest book on Casanova and was jogged into recalling he’d done this one five years earlier on Antonin Careme who cooked for Talleyrand, Napoleon, the Tsar and the Rothschilds.

It is both fascinating and boring if you know what I mean; fascinating in the telling of some of the minutiae of 19th Century cooking for royalty but boring in its listing of the meals they ate; man, did they eat. One can only shudder reading that George, the Prince Regent of Britain was so overweight his unsupported stomach drooped down to his knees.

The number of dishes served at a meal for the Rothschilds, for instance, makes Gagnaire look like a piker. And the six pages spent on how Careme spun sugar does get a bit too much.

I liked the idea that Talleyrand asked him to compose 365 meals for every day of one year, using local ingredients but again, reading just the descriptions of the 18 dishes comprising each meal was dizzying.

At some point Colette asked posited that the portion size must have been small, but no, it too was Gargantuan; sides of beef, racks of lamb, numerous wild turkeys and so on.

December 30, 2008

What a year this has been, my, oh my. It started off slowly but solidly in January when Colette and I brought in the New Year at some of our old favorities such as Ze Kitchen Galerie, le Clocher Periere, l’Epigramme, Rech, Spring, Garance + Equitable but we quickly encountered l’Entêtée, which I concluded was this year’s Spring, le Clocher Pereire, l’Epigramme or Afaria.

By late February/early March the new places had begun to settle in and for me the only ones that were impressive were l’Idee, Les Bouchons aka Le Restaurant de Philippe et Jean Pierre + Quai-Quai, until my food finder extraordinaire Atar suggested we trot out to the burbs to try the Auberge des Saints Peres in Aulnay sous Bois – wow!

April brought not only showers but Hide aka Koba’s Bistro, Veraison and Gordon Ramsay’s Veranda and late May/early June saw a burst of places that were all above average if not as top as the top: Itineraires, Six Odeon, Ducoté Cuisine, 153 Grenelle, Le Gaigne, La Folle Avoine, Le Telegraphe, Les Comperes + M comme Martine.

It was around here that I took a quick jaunt to Bilboa and was enthralled by the food, architecture and art; it really recharged my batteries.

June, July and August are my times to get out into the country (Nancy to Troyes) and hunker down, either with Colette, our friends or old acquaintances, often at old haunts, and not much hit the windshield until the rentreé. But hit it did, with a vengeance – with an incredible meal at the Table d’Adrien in the 2nd. Alas, M. Adrien is quirky and despite his assurance that I could write his “club” up for Anglophonic readers, calls by friends, female bloggers and I have resulted in not one confirmation of my enthusiasm.

Again, Colette and I took a little time from eating in France to visit Romania and while the food was not super, the exotic country was.

October saw another burst of new places, many again above-average, such as Agapes, Miroir, Dos de la Baleine, Memere Paulette + Au Gout Dujour. And November-December brought in Jadis, l’Assiette and brought the Bistrot 121 back from the dead and pricey. Only Chamarré befuddled me, but I explained that last week.

Because of the quirky nature of the Table d’Adrien, I’ll give you 11 instead of 10 top places this year but all the places I’ve mentioned positively above are well worth a visit (with two caveats: both Itineraires and Lena & Mimile have been shockingly inconsistent):

Jean-Claude Ribault in this Wednesday-Thursday’s Le Monde had two articles, the first about caviar, scallops and black rice and the second about the confiseur, la maison Lilamand in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

Saturday/Sunday, in Bonjour Paris, Margaret Kemp wrote about Guy Martin’s new book, Le Chiberta & the Casa Luca and and John Talbott wrote an essay on “Don’t you love a Good Food Fight?”

December 28, 2008

October 17th, Atar and I came here and both ate well; today I dragged Colette and we both were very disappointed. The first bad indicator was that we were alone for most of our meal.

Then my "raviolis" of lobster were not really raviolis but quenelles, which of itself is no sin, but they didn't dazzle.

I then had a "traditional" cote de veau with pleurottes, wherein the veal needed salt, pepper and Lord knows what else and the sauce was strange, like not-quite-truffles-tasting-but-trying. At this point I had a flash-back to Jadis and the book I'm reading on Careme and thought, is this attempt to recreate the great old recipes the "new" thing?

Colette's bar with a brown sauce was a la vapeur, not my favorite preparation, but even she didn't rave even with its raw endives.

She finished with her classic thermometric gauge, the rice pudding; which she said was "OK" but not gold standard and I had a decent gourmandise. Coffee and wine were also OK.

Bill = 89.90 Euros.

Oh yah - final note: the men's room door wouldn't latch but since the place was still 85% empty, it hardly mattered.

December 26, 2008

Gnashing of teeth; gritting jaw; holding back disdain. Why do American waitfolk do it? Because Dummy, studies have shown that if you’re personable and person-identifiable in the good ole US of A, you get bigger tips, as besides which, the boss sez to.

So, the other night in the village I pay my taxes in, I, my charming wife Colette and two of our dearest foodie friends are eating at one of Qayum Karzai’s places, he the brother of Hamid, the Prime Minister, who famously said that if he failed in Afghanistan, he’d go work in one of his bro’s places in Baltimore. And…, the waitperson comes over and asks the usual “Would we like a drink, bottled or tap water, etc?” And my sophisticated male friend asks “What is your name?” and she says, let’s say, “Mimi.” I’m embarrassed, mortified, puzzled – why he, rich, privileged, buff and well-traveled would ask such a gauche, direct question. So bashful though I am, I say, “What the f….. are you doing?” And he says, I think you get better service if you connect personally with the wait-person. And, maybe he’s correct.

But one of the reasons I love eating in France, especially in Paris, is that the wait-staff is professional not paraprofessional (read - out of work actresses/intermittants), they know who they are, they are tipped according to a scale and/or their helpfulness, and they regard waiting table as an honorable job. One of the best lessons Pierre Capretz taught me in “French in Action” was that "Il n'ya pas de sot métier," that is every job is important.

I’ve, faut de mieux, come to love this "cultural difference." How nice in Paris to be treated like another food-loving patron, to be addressed like a mature human being, to be seen as a customer not a buddy. (Does it bother anyone else to be summoned in a hospital clinic as “Next patient – John?” or asked by the internet help desk if I may call you “Spudsie” – or addressed by your first name in the Athletic Club?)

France, and Italy and Spain’s wait-folk treat you like an adult. I like that. Sorry egalitarians.

December 24, 2008

0.5 The Chalet des Iles Daumesnil on the Reuilly island in the Daumesnil lake in the Bois de Vincennes, 12th, 01.43.07.00.10, open everyday, all year, seemed the ideal place to go on a perfect day in late August.

It’s a bit of a schlep over from the Porte Dorée metro stop, but it is really beautiful, spectacularly beautiful, and makes you think you’re truly in the country, with swans, geese, boaters, bikers, runners, picnickers, etc.

The place sits on one of two islands in the lake, reachable by a bridge and despite looking uninhabited from the other shore, from the entrance looks huge with a grand lawn and chaises lounges spread all over and about 40 covers outside under umbrellas and who knows how many on the porch and inside. What a find!

I ordered two items I thought were failsafe; “crispy” chicken and salad and gambas with a spicy sauce. I decided after my first bite of the mushy (hardly crispy) chicken that the spices it was cooked in were just “not to my liking” but I should withhold judgment on the dish because maybe it was just me.

But when the gambas came tough and rubbery and their sauce was equally “not to my liking,” I decided it was not just me.

One more ding; two of the waitstaff let me sit for minutes, indeed many, many minutes, with my menu clearly closed, without taking my order or calling “my” waiter; they were simply too busy conversing to tend to the ample number of customers.

Someone, Francois Simon, I think, said that by eating anonymously, one got what the average diner gets, not the 5 best crustaceans one would get if recognized – I’d wished I’d been outed.

December 23, 2008

The first review I read of Chamarré Montmartre was Emmanuel Rubin’s in Figaroscope where he gave it a busted/broken heart and called it sad Caribbean stuff (apparently conflating the Caribbean and Indian oceans, which occupied the blogospere’s schadenfreude quotion for some time.) In any case, a busted heart, like a NYTimes theater/movie pan, is pretty hard to get up from.

Then I read Sebastien Demorand’s Le Fooding’s Good News section on Chamarré Montmartre, though, where he compared Antoine Heerah’s cooking to that of Vongerichten and Roka, I stopped and said “Whoa! What have we got here?”

Now, most weeks, when the big boys and girls go to a place they tend to rate/grade it as if they had eaten there together (which I realize they do, do) and like the reporters in Viet Nam after the Five O’Clock Follies, agree what would appear tomorrow.

Not this time – Rubin and Demorand – two seasoned chaps disagreeing 100% and the famed cook-book and food writer coming in between them.

Who’s right and does it matter?

Well, I hate fence-sitting and love being on the winning side, so I went and the envelope please:

Rubin in a TKO (to mix a few metaphors and references).

The place is a mess; too ambitious, too many cuisines on one menu: Indian, Franco-Mauritian and Far East almost competes with Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese/Korean ones, too many, too busy plates, and on and on.

But this is not a review of the place, it’s a meta-review; a chance to learn some lessons from the big boys and girls. So here are mine:

1. Trust no one (who said that first, Peter Lorre?)

2. Trust yourself (who said that first, I trust Bob Dylan more than Ben Spock).

3. Trust your wife or S.O., mine is the proverbial canary in the mine, with a feces-detector and an early warning system.

Monday-Tuesday, in A Nous Paris, Philippe Toinard, awarded 3/5 dots to a brasserie-bistro-bouchon Fabrique 4, 17, rue Brochant Paris in the 17th, 01 58 59 06 47, with fare such as a quenelle de broche, celeriac soup, andouillette, zucchini raviolis and fondant au chocolat or fresh fruits; lunch formula = 20 €, a la carte from 35-40 € ; and his colleague Jerome Berger reviewed and gave 3/5 dots to the one-year old l’Ordonnance, coordinates given before, serving eggs, andouilette, leeks vinegarette and baba on 17-30 € menus. On the sidebar, they noted that the MiniPalais is now serving drunch (between lunch and dinner) and didn’t think much of La Canaille in the 4th.

Francois Simon’s Hache Menu was on Derriere, coordinates given before, where he comments on the chicken, salmon and beef cheeks for 119 € that included a “serious” St Joseph. Go? It doesn’t sound imperative but he’ll return.

Wednesday, Richard Hesse of Paris Update, reviewedJadis, coordinates well-known and seemingly the hit of the month, where he found the food good and especially liked his goat cheese, recommended by the producer himself sitting nearby.

Jean-Claude Ribault in this Wednesday-Thursday’s Le Monde had two articles, the first about tasting champagnes and the second, wherein Didier Elena, of the Crayères in Reims, gave his recipe for abalone with a sabayon of champagne.